In general, a finding chart has to be attached to each OB. Exceptions are possible for some instruments, in which case this is specified in the instrument-specific rules, which can be found by selecting the instrument from the pull-down instrument selector menu in the upper right of this web page.
General Finding Chart Requirements
Regardless of the instrument, finding charts must have all the following characteristics:
Clearly indicate the Observing Run ID.
Clearly indicate the PI Name.
Clearly indicate the OB Name or Target Name, as used in the OB to which it is attached.
The target(s) position(s) must be clearly indicated.
The entire instrument field-of-view must be shown.
North and East must be clearly indicated.
The scale must be indicated by drawing a bar and writing the bar length in arcseconds or arcminutes.
The wavelength range of the image must be indicated. Whenever possible, finding charts should have similar central wavelength to observations (e.g. DSS charts are often inappropriate for IR observations, e.g. near the galactic equator).
The images should be negative, i.e. dark objects on light background.
The output files must be in JPEG format and their size must be less than 1 Mbyte.
Positions of spectroscopic acquisition reference stars, if any, should be marked.
Spectroscopic finding charts must indicate the slit(s) position(s) clearly (unless slits are aligned along the parallactic angle)
Please verify that finding charts have sufficient quality and resolution. This can be done using p2 by attaching the finding chart and then clicking on the "thumbnail" version to see the full size version displayed in your browser.
Please read the P2 finding chart tutorial for a detailed description on how to attach finding charts to OBs.
How to create finding charts
p2 Finding Chart Generation service
A Finding Chart Generation service, called p2fc, is integrated into p2. It allows the automated, non-interactive creation of finding charts for individual or multiple OBs at the push of a button for almost all of the current VLT and La Silla instruments that require finding charts. A detailed description and instructions for usage are available in the dedicated p2fc Finding Charts page.
A command line interface to p2fc is also available, via the Python p2api, allowing control over many of the characterisitics of the FC generation that are not possible in the single click implementation available in p2.
Other Finding Chart tools
Alternatively, valid finding charts can be produced with any software tool able to produce output files in JPEG format. For users who do not use the p2 finding chart generation service or instrument specific preparation tools like FIMS or KARMA, ESO recommends the use of the SkyCat-based finding chart tool. This tool provides another user-friendly interface to easily produce finding charts with the general characteristics described above.
Skycat, including the ESO Finding Chart Plugin, is now available from the ESO software repositories (see below), package name eso-skycat.
Additional rules for X-SHOOTER finding charts
The acquisition in X-Shooter is performed through an optical, technical CCD. Therefore, although your observations may focus on the NIR part, you need to provide finding charts produced using optical images. For faint targets (V>22.5mag, B>22mag) or extended objects, offset stars have to be used to define the precise slit position. It is possible to use the ObsPrep tab in the online p2 tool to select the offset star to be used for blind offset, and to produce compliant finding charts and OBs.
In addition to the standard Service Mode finding chart requirements, the finding charts for X-Shooter have to be provided in the North up -East left convention with a field size of 2x2 arc minutes and the target clearly identified. If offset stars are used for target acquisition, a corresponding 2x2 arcminute chart for the offset star has to be provided, too. Finding Charts are not Searching Charts. They are used for target identification in case of close multiple objects or crowded fields. No searches for targets will be performed if the object cannot be identified with the provided finding chart. If in the acquisition templates the slit is oriented with a specific position angle, the slit orientation has to be indicated on the finding chart, too.
ESO Mac & Linux software repositories
For several years ESO has been providing pipelines and esoreflex via MacPorts and RPM repositories.
RPM repositories are available for several Fedora, Scientific Linux and CentOS versions and can be used under certain conditions in other RPM based distributions (see the instructions below in the pull down menu for your system).
We are now in the process of extending this service, on a trial basis, to include other ESO software components, beginning with some phase 2 tools, in particular FIMS, KARMA and FPOSS, which are now all supported both for Mac and Linux.
In addition we are providing access to an EXPERIMENTALUbuntu repository (providing Phase 2 tools only, no pipelines (yet)) and it is also possible to use the Scientific Linux 7 repository on RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 systems. See instructions for accessing these repositories below.
In case your OS/distribution is not one of the above, the phase 2 tools are still available for installation via the "traditional" tarball + install script methods. But please feel free to contact usd-help@eso.org to let us know which OS/distribution you would like supported. Obviously we cannot promise to support every single OS/distribution, but this information will help guide us in deciding where any resources that might be available in the future would be best focussed.
Currently only 64bit systems are being supported. Please contact usd-help@eso.org if you need 32bit support.
To make use of these repositories to install the available tools you will need superuser/admin user (i.e. the ability to run sudo) privilege, or else to ask you system administrator, to first install the repositories and then the tool(s).
Please follow the instructions below, as appropriate for your operating system/distribution.
Choose your platform:
Fedora 20-21 RPM installation
Please note, fedora 20-21 are no longer supported as of 2018-04-21. Packages are currently still available from the ESO repositories, but will no longer be updated, and may disappear at any moment.
If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.
You can test that it is working with the following command:
yum search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo yum install <package_name>
Fedora 22-23 RPM installation
Please note, fedora 22-23 and fedora 24-25 are no longer supported as of 2018-04 and 2020-05 respectively. Packages are still available from the ESO repositories for some of these distributions, but will no longer be updated, and may disappear at any moment -- notably the fedora 25 repository has already been emptied.
If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.
You can test that it is working with the following command:
dnf search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo dnf install <package_name>
Fedora 26-31 RPM installation
If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.
You can test that it is working with the following command:
dnf search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo dnf install <package_name>
Scientific Linux 7 RPM installation
If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.
You can test that it is working with the following command:
yum search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo yum install <package_name>
Fedora 26 & 27 RPM installation
It is possible to use the Fedora 25 RPMs on Fedora 26 & 27 systems. But please note: As the packages were not built natively for this system, there is a possibility of problems due to incompatibility, but thus far tests have been positive.
You will need to enable the Fedora 25 ESO repository. Please follow the instructions below. Please note that you will then be using packages built on Fedora 25 systems. All of our tests thus far show that these binaries behave normally, but there is always the possibility at something behaves peculilarly, or that at some point the packages even simply stop working (due to broken dependancies). Please contact usd-help@eso.org if you experience or detect any peculiar behaviour or problems with using the Fedora 25 packages on Fedora 26+ systems. Please note that this method will also give you access to the ESO pipelines via RPM installation. The same message applies: use with caution!
Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Fedora 25 ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):
bash
cd /tmp
wget -O esorepo-fedora25.repo ftp://ftp.eso.org/pub/dfs/pipelines/repositories/stable/fedora/esorepo.repo
sed -i -e 's/esorepo/esorepo-fedora25/' esorepo-fedora25.repo
sed -i -e 's/enabled=1/enabled=0/' esorepo-fedora25.repo
sed -i -e 's/$releasever/25/' esorepo-fedora25.repo
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo esorepo-fedora25.repo
exit
You can test that it is working with the following command:
If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.
You can test that it is working with the following command:
yum search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo yum install <package_name>
RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 RPM installation
It is possible to use the Scientific Linux 7 RPMs on RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 systems. But please note: As the packages were not built natively for this system, there is a possibility of problems due to incompatibility, but thus far tests have been positive.
You will need to enable the Scientific Linux 7 ESO repository. Please follow the instructions below. Please note that you will then be using packages built on Scientific Linux 7 systems. All of our tests thus far show that these binaries behave normally, but there is always the possibility at something behaves peculilarly, or that at some point the packages even simply stop working (due to broken dependancies). Please contact usd-help@eso.org if you experience or detect any peculiar behaviour or problems with using the Scientific Linux 7 packages on centoOS 7 or RHEL 7 systems. Please note that this method will also give you access to the ESO pipelines via RPM installation. The same message applies: use with caution!
Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Scientific Linux 7 ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):
bash
cd /tmp
wget -O esorepo-sl7.repo ftp://ftp.eso.org/pub/dfs/pipelines/repositories/stable/sl/esorepo.repo
sed -i -e 's/esorepo/esorepo-sl7/' esorepo-sl7.repo
sed -i -e 's/enabled=1/enabled=0/' esorepo-sl7.repo
sed -i -e 's/$releasever/7/' esorepo-sl7.repo
sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo esorepo-sl7.repo
exit
You can test that it is working with the following command:
We are also offering Ubuntu repositories on an TRIAL, EXPERIMENTAL and best-effort-support basis. Ubuntu repositories are currently available for Ubuntu 64bit 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 19.04 & 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.
Ubuntu 17.04, 17.10 & 18.10 repositories are still available but are no longer being updated. They were last updated for P102 (i.e. in July 2018). Some of the packages there may still be useful, but are officially are out-of-date and will NOT be updated.
Ubuntu 12 LTS and 14.04 LTS repositories are still available but are no longer being updated. They were last updated for P101 (i.e. in December 2017). Some of the packages there may still be useful, but are officially are out-of-date and will NOT be updated. In particular the Skycat provided by the FIMS package will not be able to connect to the ESO image and catalogue servers.
If you use our Ubuntu repositories, please consider providing feedback to usd-help@eso.org:
if you experience any problems
if your version of Ubuntu is not supported
especially if you appreciate this service and would like to see it continued and (eventually) expanded (as this will help us to motivate commiting resources to doing so...)
Please also note that Ubuntu USD-ESO repository support is (currently) only available for Phase 2 preparation tool software, the ESO pipelines are not currently available from ESO for Ubuntu (though appear to be via the community at large).
Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Ubuntu USD-ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):
If you get an error message like the following (usually for all Ubuntu versions higher than or equal to 19):
E: The method 'ftp'; is unsupported and disabled by default. Consider switching to http(s). Set Dir::Bin::Methods::ftp to "ftp" to enable it again.
E: Failed to fetch ftp://ftp.eso.org/usg/ubuntu/dists/disco/InRelease
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
You will need to enable ftp as follows:
echo 'Dir::Bin::Methods::ftp "ftp";' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99local-ftp
You then need to install the security key and update the package information:
You can test that it is working with the following command:
apt-cache search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo apt-get install <package_name>
For the technically minded: The Ubuntu packages are created from Fedora RPMs using alien.
other Debian with APT (e.g. Mint)
We are also offering Ubuntu repositories on an TRIAL, EXPERIMENTAL and best-effort-support basis. Ubuntu repositories are currently available for Ubuntu 64bit 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 19.04 & 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.
Ubuntu 17.04, 17.10 & 18.10 repositories are still available but are no longer being updated. They were last updated for P102 (i.e. in July 2018). Some of the packages there may still be useful, but are officially are out-of-date and will NOT be updated.
Ubuntu 12 LTS and 14.04 LTS repositories are still available but are no longer being updated. They were last updated for P101 (i.e. in December 2017). Some of the packages there may still be useful, but are officially are out-of-date and will NOT be updated. In particular the Skycat provided by the FIMS package will not be able to connect to the ESO image and catalogue servers.
These Ubuntu repositories can also be used by (some) other Debian systems with the APT package management system, especially if they are derived from Ubuntu, e.g. Linux Mint. You just have to work out which of our Ubuntu repositories best matches your system, for example Linux Mint 18 & 18.* are based on Ubuntu 16.04 (code name xenial) while Linux Mint 17 & 17.* are based on Ubuntu 14.04 (code name trusty). For example see this page for Linux Mint version information, and this page for Ubuntu code names (the codename to use is the first name in the Code name column all in lowercase).
If you use our Ubuntu repositories, please consider providing feedback to usd-help@eso.org:
if you experience any problems
if your version of Ubuntu is not supported
especially if you appreciate this service and would like to see it continued and (eventually) expanded (as this will help us to motivate commiting resources to doing so...)
Please also note that Ubuntu USD-ESO repository support is (currently) only available Phase 2 preparation tool software, the ESO pipelines are not currently available from ESO for Ubuntu (though appear to be via the community at large).
Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Ubuntu USD-ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):
You can test that it is working with the following command:
apt-cache search eso-
Then to install a package:
sudo apt-get install <package_name>
For the technically minded: The Ubuntu packages are created from Fedora RPMs using alien.
Generic RPM-Linux systems and Source-RPMs
Please note, that in addition to the binary RPMs avaiable from these repositories, source-RPMs are also avaialble, and it might be possible (for "expert users") to create system-specific versions of the RPMs, see e.g. the fedora-31 SRPM repo. In general the SRPMs of all the different supported versions are identical, so it usually doesn't matter which one you take.
The ESO MacPorts repository currently provides BINARY packages for Mac OS X 10.11 to 10.15, though not all packages are available for all OS versions. For earlier and more recent OS versions than currently supported, using the ESO MacPorts repository is still supported for most software packages, it just means that ESO packages will be built natively on your machine from SOURCE, which in most cases just means it will take longer to install a given package than required for the BINARY packages, but it should eventually get there. Some packages however are known not to work on certain Mac OS versions, and it that case even the SOURCE installation will fail, or else it is possible the installation itself will apparently succeed, but the sotware may fail to work correctly -- use at your own risk.
Once you have an up and running Macports system, please follow the procedure described in bullet point 1 here to configure the ESO MacPorts repository.
If you haven't done so within the past two weeks it is probably a good idea to also do
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port upgrade outdated
Once the ESO MacPorts repository is installed via the instructions above you can browse the avaiable (non pipeline) ESO packages with: